Artists draw on silly streak in showing Ai Weiwei support

THE award-winning British sculptor Anish Kapoor is renowned for creating monumental installations, including the fantastical Orbit tower for this year's Olympic Games in London.

He is one of the leading figures in contemporary art and his artworks, which can fetch more than $1 million, will feature at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney next month.

But Kapoor invited Britain's leading artists to his London studio last week to, as he tells Fairfax Media, ''make idiots of themselves'' in support of the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.

Artists Mark Wallinger, Bob and Roberta Smith and Tom Phillips and dancers Tamara Rojo and Deborah Bull were some of the cultural figures who joined Kapoor to shoot a parody of Psy's Gangnam Style.

"Our video aims to make a serious point about freedom of speech and freedom of expression,'' Kapoor says. ''It is our hope that this gesture of support for Ai Weiwei will be wide-ranging and will help to emphasise how important these freedoms are to us all."

The video was directed by leading dancer Akram Khan, who performed at the Melbourne Festival last month, and follows Ai's own version of the popular Korean pop song, which was banned by Chinese authorities after it went viral on the internet last month.

Ai's video, Grass Mud Horse Style, a reference to a Chinese curse banned on social networking sites, features the artist and his friends performing Psy's horse dance interspersed with the original video.

Ai, who was detained by Chinese authorities earlier this year and is prohibited from leaving the country, is also shown wearing handcuffs.

Kapoor says Ai's video was a comment on the lack of freedom in China. ''Sometimes we forget what a great privilege and fundamental human reality it is to be able to speak out and say what we have to say,'' he says.

Kapoor says he is not interested in creating art with a political message. But at the same time, ''I believe very strongly that making art is deeply political even though I've never made works that are overtly political''.

Kapoor says artists have to speak out in support of human rights given the silence of Western governments.

''I think what happens is there tends to be a sort of policy - a very, very clear policy - that says we'll be nice to everybody, especially the Chinese, from whom we can earn a living.

''We'll be nice to them, we won't make any noise about all the things we disagree with in order to keep the current economic status quo.''

The Gangnam Style video is not the first time Kapoor has expressed support for Ai, who has been critical of the Chinese government's stance on democracy and human rights. At the unveiling of his Leviathan sculpture at Monumenta 2011 in Paris, which he dedicated to Ai, Kapoor called for a day of gallery closures around the world to protest against the Chinese authorities' treatment of the artist.

Kapoor says he discovered then that he had a voice, even if his motivation was not wholly altruistic. ''I understand that part of what I'm doing is about me, it's not just about him. I think it's important to remember that when you do something like this.''